Abstract

Perceptibility and acceptability are the most often used threshold units in
the field of color science. The former refers to a just perceptible difference and
the latter evokes a tolerable color difference. Such thresholds can be very
significant to color quality control processes in the printing industry and should
be defined in quality measure units. Optical density (OD) and color difference
models are usually utilized as color quality measures and have been provided in a
considerable number of commercial measuring devices such as spectrophotometers.
However, their merits and traits are far less understood in the literature. The
present study intends to evaluate performance of those color quality measures
including the OD and widely known color difference models, e.g.
ΔE*<sub>ab</sub>
ΔE<sub>CMC(l:c)</sub> and
ΔE*<sub>00</sub>. A set of psychophysical assessments
were carried out in order to accumulate the perceptibility and acceptability
thresholds data, and their central trend was compared with the color quality measure
estimates.